23 comments
:

Spinner of Yarn
said...

I must admit the pressure is enormous! I've spent much time trying to figure out just the right question. After all, I don't want to embarrass myself. So here goes. My late Friday question to you (or early Friday), Would you like to hear a good story?

I kept seeing the same commercial for this show, the one where the announcer says, "...in the best shape of their lives!" while a woman is shown emerging from a pool. That summed up the appeal, I think. My suggested tagline for future ads: "What if the FBI was like Baywatch?"

I did community service and watched this show; I may have been too lazy to shut off the television. I don't recall.

God, it was awful, and I'm quite sure that it isn't actually any of the recruits that did it but the recovering alcoholic training guy who used to be Courtney Cox's boyfriend on COUGAR TOWN, wanting to prove his value breaking a fake case where he set up the prime suspect. Mostly I couldn't bring myself to care about a single character on the show, except for the one played by the just-mentioned actor, because I liked him on COUGAR TOWN and I felt sorry that he'd been given such a hump of a role here.

QUANTICO is artless inauthentic crap; it is everything that people complain about when people complain about television. I can't imagine that it's based in any shred of truth other than "Yes, there is an FBI".

Actually, what brings me here today is something you may wish to rant about, Mr. Levine, pr perhaps just quietly despair. The Toronto Maple Leafs are supposedly not going to transport their radio broadcast team to away venues; the team will call the game from a studio, where they will be watching on television.

Ugh. I wonder how much of this actually goes on now with other teams (or, really, I suspect, with ESPN Radio and Westwood One's NFL coverage).

Some really good laugh lines (repeated photo reference, blowing up another network building, nerd & exec getting a shot at a hot girl). You should think about doing a satirical script along the lines of MY FAVORITE YEAR, where a newly-hired, fresh-out-of-college lower-rung network suit sits in on pitch meetings and can't decide who are the bigger idiots - his co-workers or the writers making inane pitches that sell. Of course, no broadcast network will pick it up, but cable network might.

I think I wrote the first of these pitch sketches (pitcher/exec dialogues) - for Argo, underneath Ken's review of the film. Argo - the film where Hollywood saves the day, after the CIA fail. Pure Oscar bait.

Then it went on to win Best Picture. I was only joking. Who knew Hollywood was so shallow?

I've seen mentions of "lazy writing" in this blog. So here's question on something that's kinda bugged me over the years: Would a sitcom where the cast gets shipped to a Vacation Location for an episode (or two, if the show's really popular) be considered "lazy writing" even if they somehow worked something that resembles a plot line (even a thin one) in there? And really, do episodes like that serve any purpose beyond maybe being a mini travelogue?

We had 'The Brady Bunch' go to King's Island and then Hawaii, where Vincent Price was storing his career in some cave. We had 'The Partridge Family' bus break down in whatever ghost town Out West that Dean Jagger was storing his career in some cave. And on tonite's rerun episode of 'The Middle', the Heck family got stuck at the front gate of Disney World, and we spend 2 whole episodes joining their full-boat everything-paid excursion.

I also notice episodes like this happen in like season 4 or 5. So really — is it just an excuse for a vacation on the network/studio's dime because the show can, or do episodes like this actually test the writers' shit? Or is it just a case of "OK fine. Fuck it, then — just screw it and enjoy the scenery?"

Just wondering what it must be like writing for those things, or what established sitcom writers must think about episodes like that. Or worse, the show telling everyone: "Guess what, gang? We're going to Borneo next week!"

State of Affairs is more realistic, and that ended with Katherine Heigl hunting down a terrorist and taking out his whole camp- and just prior to that taking a phone call 50 feet away, but hey there was a truck in between.

About KEN LEVINE

Named one of the BEST 25 BLOGS by TIME Magazine. Ken Levine is an Emmy winning writer/director/producer/major league baseball announcer. In a career that has spanned over 30 years Ken has worked on MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, DHARMA & GREG, and has co-created three series. He and his partner wrote the feature VOLUNTEERS. Ken has also been the radio/TV play-by-play voice of the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, San Diego Padres. and Dodger Talk. He hosts the podcast HOLLYWOOD & LEVINE

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